The C- Word

Ah, the c-word. That’s cunt, by the way. Recently several Anti-Room contributors were discussing how they feel about this loaded word, so we decided it was time for a group post.

The Cuntpower Issue of Oz, edited by Germaine Greer in 1970. They couldn't put the c-word on the cover, though.

SUSAN DALY

You’ll only hear this word from me once: cunt. And I only spell it out here in all its inglorious four-letter violence because I don’t want any confusion about which c-word I hate. Men: by all means have your own discussion about cock. If you feel degraded by its use, then I will of course stop using it.

The Vagina Monologues told women to reclaim the c-word by using it as often as possible to denude it of its power to shock. Well, fanny to that. I don’t want to get used to hearing it used as punctuation, adjective and verb.

You, my female friend who once called me a ‘lucky c***’ with alleged affection, and you, my male friend who reserves it for sports rivals, wash your mouths out. As long as someone somewhere is using it to verbally assault a woman, I don’t want to hear it.

ARLENE HUNT

Let me preface this by saying that I personally think we could really do without swearing on The Anti-Room at all. I think we are perfectly capable of getting our argument or opinion across with resorting to cursing.

BUT.

Perhaps having gown up with an ex-army man who used it as verb, noun, adverb and adjective, I am pretty much immune to the much ballyhooed shock value of the word ‘cunt’. It’s a crass swear word to be sure, but no worse than any other the other swear words we might use in a day. I have never understood why people spell it, or write ‘the c- word’, any more than I understand people utter ‘dropped the f-bomb’. Weaselly claptrap. Either swear or don’t, but why nit pick over which swear word is acceptable and which is not? I realise not everyone is so unperturbed by its usage, but unless agreed swearing is verboten on a group blog – which is absolutely fine by me – the word cunt should no more be avoided than any other swear word. It is the venom behind a swear that makes it powerful, not the actual word itself. Swear or swear not, there is no middle ground.

JUNE CALDWELL

In North Dublin ‘cunt’ was a term of endearment. “Go wan ye cunt ye!” usually meant: “you jammy git” and referred to someone who’d won on the horses, bagged a girl more than one man was after or won a turkey in a Christmas raffle. It was also used to mock someone, usually a young guy who’d made a fool of himself in some way. “He’s a right cunt, isn’t he!?” I didn’t particularly twig that it was a derogatory epithet or a ‘vulgarism’ re: women’s private parts. When I moved to England – and later at University – this became abundantly clear. I still hear the word used in its North Dublin form on the 13A bus regularly. Despite its ‘nasty’ connotations, Irish men seem to think it’s ‘kinky’ to use the word in bed (a lot). As do East European mafia, before they shoot someone in the head.

ANNA CAREY

Despite being another northsider (June and I went to the same secondary school!), I hardly ever heard the word cunt when I was growing up. I wasn’t even aware of it until I was a teenager, and then I knew it was a taboo word, the worst thing you could ever call someone, which was why no one seemed to use it. And as I grew older, I found myself questioning why this was. Why should it be so much worse than ‘dick’? What did that say about our attitudes to women’s bodies? And would – and should – most of us ever use it as a word for that body part itself? Then, in 1998, when I was working on my MA thesis about the legendary ‘60s counterculture magazine Oz, I discovered the Cuntpower/Female Energy Issue of Oz that Germaine Greer edited in 1970. In it, the future author of The Female Eunuch proudly reclaimed the word as part of an active rather than passive female sexuality. Her no-nonsense approach to the word appealed to me, and I found myself agreeing with her desire to reclaim the c-word from misogyny.

And yet while I don’t have a problem with it in theory, I still never really use ‘cunt’, either as a word for vagina or as a swear word. Maybe it’s because I never got into the habit of using it, or because at the back of my mind I think it still retains some sort of shocking power. The last time I called someone a cunt, I was giving out about the Pope and his ability to condemn gay marriage while brushing off child rape. I was so angry with him that only the most extreme word I could think of would do. And for better or worse, that’s still cunt.

Like this:

Related

32 Responses

This is a great and interesting post. It’s a really powerful word, for sure. Why IS it that it’s offensive though? I mean, it’s just a word, but it can cause hurt, offense and embarrassment. And it’s used every day by friends of mine of both genders.

Not expressing an opinion about the word myself, just interested in why it’s so offensive.

Funnily enough, I had this conversation with two female colleagues yesterday, one is French Canadian and as a child used to watch a movie called “Le Diner de Cons” which translates to The Dinner of the Cunts….a family movie apparently!

I use it happily as a synonym for vulva, so I’m not so happy about using it as a casual swear word (why should something that describes something female and fantastic be the ultimate insult?) But like Anna, I do recourse to using it when describing an ultimate outrage. Last time I used it, though, I think was when Bush invaded Iraq. Long long time.

Tangent: why, in Ireland and Britain, is it only men who get called cunts, whereas in the US it’s a gender-neutral insult?

Actually, in the US, it’s really not a gender-neutral insult – it has serious misogynistic connotations over there and isn’t really used about men (there have been a few interesting discussions about this between British and American commenters on Jezebel). Now I come to think of it, there was an entire episode of 30 Rock based around the misogynistic nature of the insult!

Right, well, am not proud to admit this but I’ve said it thousands of times since I was a kid but – and this is important – never once with the intention of objectifying or demeaning women in any way. It’s just that there are times – Jim Davidson appearing on the telly, Ireland getting knocked out of the World Cup, me losing my keys when my bike is chained to a post on Grafton St – when no other profanity will suffice.

Quite apart from anything else – the combination of the very hard K sound and the rough as hell NT at the end make it, phonetically much stronger than most – possibly all – other swear words in the English language. Surely that is one of the reasons it resonates the way it does. The Spanish equivalent – Coño – is a much softer sounding word and is, as a result, a whole lot more socially acceptable and used by grannies and four-year-olds and everyone in between as a piece of verbal punctuation up there with ‘and’. No-one ever bats an eyelid there, Coño!

Contrast this with the first time I used the epitaph in the US – men and women in their early 20s swooned and I was practically thrown out of a house party. In fact the only thing that saved me from eviction was the fact that it was my house.

In its modern context it has nothing to do with the subjugation of women. In my experience it is used far more often to refer to men and on an order of magnitude I would place it above twat and prick and about level with bastard.
The use of most curses words bears absolutely no relation to their etymology. In Dutch all of the bad swear words like tering and kanker relate to diseases. In some languages like Spanish and Italian family related curses are the worst.
Placing it that context it is a nasty word because of what people mean by it not because of its (slang) physiological meaning.

I use cunt all the time and have no problem with it whatsoever. I recently employed it most vigourously to describe the anti Civil Partnership Bill protestors outside the Dáil. Because they are a certified shower of cunts.

I think Anna and Arlene make good points about how different words ‘sound’ and our subconscious use of them. As Anna says, ‘dick’ seems so much innoxious and inoffensive than ‘prick’ which is usually spat out, with a bullet-like quality. I have been guilty too of using ‘cunt’ as a swear word in terms of people I momentarily loathe, in addition to the explanation I gave above. Though it’s so overused in our society that I didn’t view it as being so detestable as, say, my UK office mates did when I moved over there and used it casually one lunch-time in an insurance company to describe to vending machine that ate my money without giving me back a cup of snot-green sickly soup. It’s all about context, isn’t it? I remember one particularly strange boyfriend during the Celtic Tiger years who was awful anal…he’d cringe if you said you were blowing your nose or if you mentioned someone farting on a packed bus in Baggot Street. “Don’t say that!” he’d roar. But he used the c-word in bed, in a serious manner, which really made me burn up and cringe. As a swear word: OK. As a shard of savagery: not OK. As a description for women’s body parts: pretty pathetic and démodé. As a pet name for a guinea pig: exceptional.

Vulgar, nasty, abrasive, cruel, obnoxious, horrid – there’s no end to the negative adjectives I can churn out about this word. It’s a last resort, a stinging blow and mark of how tremendously angry I feel to ever use it and so, it does have a power as a curse. The fact it refers to a vagina doesn’t bother me that much – it seems that swear words, ‘balls’, ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ for example, stem from a primitive need for anger-expression as almost all words relate to our bodies and their functions or extensions of the same like ‘bastard’ rather than say, iron swords or china ornaments. I can trace the etymology of the word to understand its origin and meaning but it’s actually the sound – and the same goes for ‘cock’ – that really jars my nerves with syllables so harsh and aggressive like the secret language of rapists. I use its power wisely though – unlike regular profanities which mean nothing because you hear them all the time, cunt is saved for such desperate occasions that I actually sense a genuine release of anger when I say it.

When I was a kid there was a long list of curse words were equally bad to my child-mind (“bloody” and “balls” and “bastard” and “Jesus” and “feck” and “shit” were as bad as “cunt”)

It’s interesting how words fall off the taboo list. “Shit” and “bastard” and “Jesus” and “balls” are now used by radio presenters in the middle of the day. I’m pretty sure “bloody” and “feck” probably weren’t even particularly offensive back when I was a kid. On the other hand I think “cunt” has become more offensive thanks to the more misogynistic context it has in the US.

Stephen Pinker says that taboo words activate older parts of the brain connected with notions of fight-or-flight and not just the bits concerned with language. (That neurological reaction is also why those words are so satisfying to say in times of stress. Recent studies even suggest that cursing has pain-relieving properties).

Our society’s taboos are around sex and bodily fluids and bodily parts and less and less around religion. And I suspect that for a lot of the people who come to this blog – sexism, racism and other selfish isms are bordering on strong taboos, and so words that imply those world views probably also have that effect on some of our brains.

Anyway, this is a long and pretentious way of saying that words that are totally inoccuous to some are verbal violence to others… as all these comments are sort of proving.

Preferred term of choice for lady parts in my (lesbian) household, but I wouldn’t use it in anger. I certainly notice when other people say it as a swearword or an epithet, but it doesn’t offend me so much as just make me raise my eyebrows and quietly cross them off the Christmas card list.

Back when I was a narky teenager, I always used to respond to people using “cunt” or “twat” as swearwords with, “Nothing wrong with cunts” (or twats, if that was their word of choice. The looks you’d get: people who’d just shouted out, “You fooking cunt!” would give me this completely shocked look because I’d just brought up VAGINAS in a perfectly innocent conversation that had no VAGINAS in it at all. Brilliant.

One of my favourite words I have to admit. I grew up in south county Dublin where we like to pussyfoot around real words, so until I started hanging with northsider knacks I really only knew words like ‘front bottom’ and ‘bum’. I wrote a poem called ‘Cunt’ recently, I’ll be reading it next week at the Feile festival where I’ll be sharing the stage with Brian Kennedy. (Now there’s a plug for my gig, eh…)
I’ve been getting grief about another poem I wrote over on my blog, one that doesn’t have any rude words, but the wans who don’t like it are all cunts if you ask me.

I come from a part of the world where the word cunt is always reserved for women, and always said with anger or contempt. No one would ever call a male friend a cunt, or use it as friendly ribbing. It is most definitely misogynistic in its use in North America.

And I think for the most part, until I moved to ireland I would have referred to it as the c-word.

Here? It sounds less angry, less violent, and less personal. It doesn’t make me wince to hear it here, in the same way it would have in Canada.

Which gives me some reason to consider the validity of the argument for using the word and removing the power.

I grew up in a card-playing household where the air would turn blue every Sunday night as my mam’s family argued over 110. There’s nothing like hearing one’s grandmother shrieking “yis cunts!” to desensitise one to the word.

These days, I swear like a navvy (despite best efforts), but, like other commenters, cunt remains my last-ditch profanity.

I think it’s an absolutely beautiful word. I find it sensual and evocative and powerful. I love it. I don’t use it as a swear word because most or all situations are too small for it. It’s one of my favourite words.

Used frequently swear words are cheap abuse. Some relationships seem to require that sort of thing. Personally, I swear only under extreme provocation – and usually at myself and below my breath. What does this make me, a prude? I do not write about characters who swear. What sort of writer does tha make me – suppressed, limited. a Jamesian refugee. Or just myself.

Most swear words are used when anger manifests itself and are ,as such, deemed offensive in themselves. This of course is incorrect.
Which is worse
You are a stupid c***/pr***
or
You are stupid?
I will venture the second example because it does not convey anger and may be taken on board by the recipient more readily than the obviously angry first example, therefore far more damaging to the recipient.
Words, doncha jus luvvem ?

I have never used the word as an insult, but I sometimes use privately to it to refer to my intimate sanctum; but usually I prefer the Gaelic Gí, or Gig (GEE, hard ‘g’).
I find this word more satisfying than CUNT or FUCK (both Anglo-Saxon), though FUCK does bring much satisfaction.
GEE has a few variations – GEEBAG GEEFACE ‘FACE LIKE A GEE’ etc – I have always found GEEBAG a good one, especially combined with ‘SLAPPER’…(Is that literally a prostitute who spanks?) and ‘TARMAGINT’ or HARPY

But are these words necessarily misogynist?
It is a matter of context – when a man is using it to insult another man, its misogynist, the same as if he called him a ‘woman’ or a ‘big girls blouse’ to insult him, because it insults women too.
I’ve used the word ‘PRICK’ as an insult, and it does mean a nasty person with an overinflated ego to me…
‘GREEDY CUNT’ (North Dublin) I can understand as an aspect of the devouring mother archetype diluted down.
But I think for a lot of people, the use of the word as ‘worst swear’ is related to it’s shock value, it’s an expletive, an extreme form of expression. The fact that an ancient word for the Human birth canal is the worst insult in our culture emphasizes a chronic and deeprooted misogyny within our culture which is still here 50 years later

[…] control over their own bodies as ‘medieval’. He also claimed he’d been insulted and called a cunt. He scrambled about in the dark for 40 dazed seconds wondering ‘how we ever got to a point where […]